Video Format

Lu Tze

Howdy,

I have a large movie collection in mostly divx/xvid format and was wondering if there was a better format to change them into to to reduce their size, and any suggestions on (free) software to use?

I don't mind a bit of a drop in quality so long as the drop in size is justifiable.

Cheers

sink

Are you going to be using these files with any specific device such as portable devices (PSP,iPod), consoles (xbox 360, PS3) or other HDD/network media players (WD TV)?

Lu Tze

No, just on the laptop using vlc/windows media player so any format will do

CreepingDeath

I use FormatFactory, it's free. ( It can rip dvds too )

sink

Well your best to go with x264 video compression and MP3/AC-3 audio compression in a Matroska container format. It's pretty standard these days.

To encode I recommend http://www.mediacoderhq.com/

TouchingVirus

Why would you take an already compressed format, and compress it further? You'll just end up with much crappier video and audio.

350MB per 42 minutes is grand. For movies it's 700MB for 1hr30 or maybe 1.4GB but that's which 5.1 audio. If you don't have 5.1 speakers then you can rip the audio, mux to 2 channel, compress into an MP3 and the 1.4GB turns into ~1GB.

Get another hard drive, burn some movies to DVD - there are better options out there that don't require you to butcher your bitrate

Lu Tze

Thanks for the replys. I'm heading off to work abroad, so will only have my laptop with me, and would like to bring as much of my films with me. Will still have the originals backed up at home. 5.1 audio wouldn't really be important.

Was hoping for something that i could just queue them up and leave them encoding for a few days.

I have about 700gbs of films/tv shows, obviously don't want to be taking everything with me, but have about 250 gb of space.

Might just run them through Auto GK again at 75% quality or something. Has anybody used the ATI Video Converter yoke? I have a HD5770 to run it but haven't even downloaded the software yet

ED E

h.264 MP4s will lose some quality but be a bit smaller. TBH though I'd only ever go below the standard 640 divx for use on my iPod Touch.

TBH, go through them and burn your favourites to a few DVDs or an ultraportable 500GB.

Lu Tze

Yeah, i'm bringing a portable external hard drive, hence the 250GB. No DVD drive, its an ultra portable i have. Its mainly the one i haven't watched yet that i will be bringing.

Thanks for the suggestions and advice. I'll give the H.264 a go, and if that ain't worth the trade off in quality i'll just leave it as is.

Anybody know a good converter for H.264?

ED E

Lu Tze wrote: »

Yeah, i'm bringing a portable external hard drive, hence the 250GB. No DVD drive, its an ultra portable i have. Its mainly the one i haven't watched yet that i will be bringing.

Thanks for the suggestions and advice. I'll give the H.264 a go, and if that ain't worth the trade off in quality i'll just leave it as is.

Anybody know a good converter for H.264?

Imtoo Video Converter, not free but does the job well.

Lu Tze

I gave media coder a go, was almost impossible to see the difference and reduced file size by ~ 25%.

Only problem is it is taking fecking ages! Transcoding speed is about 1.4.

Gave the Avivo Ati soiftware a go too, quality turned out ****e, and didn't reduce the size at all! It was very fast though, but completely pointless.

Guess i'm not going to get it much quicker than that, hardware limiting it.

Thanks for the suggestions anyways

ED E

Yeah, compression is slow. Really need to get myself an i7, but before that a decent cam.

Lu Tze

Try it on a low clocked core 2 duo!

ED E

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz

Not so quick here.

Lu Tze

E6550 myself! really irritating that the ati software is so shit - it would be a real selling point if they improved it.